The Case for Reparation (Singular): Why Bernie Sanders Is Right

Sanders’ argument is that reparations are divisive and politically unfeasible, and that we ought to concentrate on socioeconomic policies that help African Americans by reducing poverty and unemployment and providing a free education. Coates has two counterarguments. The first is that Sanders’s socialist economic policies are just as politically unfeasible as reparations, so that political feasibility should be no obstacle for a radical like Sanders. His second is that typical Democratic socioeconomic “class first” policies “address black people not so much as a class specifically injured by white supremacy, but rather, as a group which magically suffers from disproportionate poverty”; and don’t tackle the continued effects of racism: for example, disparate employment rates among college graduates and “the fact that black men without criminal records have about the same shot at low-wage work as white men with them.” Reparations, he seems to imply, would address these problems.

Are these counterarguments reasonable?

Let’s start with Coates’s second counterargument. Part of the difficulty in assessing it is that he doesn’t—here or in his 2014 essay, The Case for Reparations—concretely define “reparations.” Perhaps they consist of a cash payout, perhaps a set of policies. Whatever the case, the value of reparations lies not in the payout or the policies. A payout would not materially address the problem of racism, and it would make little material difference in the lives of African Americans (there is no sum available that, divided among more than 40 million people, would be very meaningful to them in the long term). And the implementation of policies is consistent with the position of Sanders and the Democratic establishment (you can call such policies “reparations” if you like). In his 2014 essay, Coates acknowledges that the value of reparations is supposed to be primarily symbolic: they are meant to repay a national moral debt to African Americans. Above all, they—or the process of fighting for them—are meant to lead to a “national reckoning that would lead to a spiritual renewal”: a “full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences,” “an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts,” “a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt,” and a “revolution of American consciousness.”

In light of the purely symbolic function of reparations, it’s not hard to see why Sanders opposes them. As a socialist, he’s likely to believe that actual policies, not symbolic gestures, are the proper means for combating racism and improving the socioeconomic status of African Americans. He is also likely to believe that reparations, far from leading to a “revolution of American consciousness,” would alienate enough of the population that they would make implementing such policies much harder.

Which leads us back to Coates’s first counterargument. When Bernie Sanders says he doesn’t want to be “divisive,” he probably means in part that he wants to communicate to a large population of uneducated lower- and working-class whites that they are included in his tent. To win them over, he needs to convince them that his interest in the well-being of minorities does not come at the expense of his interest in their well-being. Above all, he needs to convince them that he is not trying to punish them.

Consequently, as a politician Sanders has much different goals than the left-leaning commentariat, which has made this demographic their scapegoat, with increasing vehemence during Obama's tenure. This demographic are referred to as the irredeemable bigots who, despite their socioeconomic status, are congenitally “privileged.” This talk is generally carried on by white people who actually are socioeconomically privileged: in one blow, they redeem themselves by confessing their collective white guilt, and redirect their fire to those white people who refuse to confess. Unfortunately, their target population is genuinely, materially insecure. Feeling guilty and renouncing their few advantages is not some symbolic game to them that they can play in their spare time, because they have nothing real to lose. They have a lot to lose, and that’s the way they’re going to behave. They are interested in themselves and their own futures, not in elevating their perceived moral status via the conspicuous ethical consumption of the plight of the marginalized. And importantly, they want to believe that their country, whatever its flaws, is fundamentally good rather than evil. They want to feel proud of their country, because identifying with its collective power is one of the compensations they get for material powerlessness.

There’s a dark side to all of this, of course, and Donald Trump’s popularity is a manifestation of it. At the same time, Trump’s demographic are well aware of the left-wing commentariat's contempt for them, and I think they are motivated in part by the idea that electing an offensive buffoon like Trump would be a delicious sort of revenge. Democratic politicians can respond to this circumstance with one of two approaches: they can, like the commentariat, write off this demographic as irredeemable bigots. Or they can try to persuade them. Bernie Sanders very clearly would like to persuade them: large numbers of them are actually registered Democrats. I also think he genuinely cares about the underclass, qua underclass. He’s willing to forgive it for being predominantly white, and he’s willing to forgive it its ignorance and parochialism. And that, I’m afraid, is why he is so irritating to the segment of the American left whose primary focus is not socioeconomic policy but punitive symbolic gestures around identity.

The function of a “national reckoning” is nominally to enlighten a population of ignoramuses. It is certainly not designed to further enlighten the large number of educated white Americans for whom holding the right views on racial issues is already a central part of their moral identity. For left-leaning white elites, a “national reckoning” would not be a renunciation but a feast of moralism that affirms everything they already believe. Its function would be to further establish a moral pathos of distance to all the ignorant white people who refuse to join them at their table: why do they refuse to eat the same cake?

The real function of a “national reckoning” is indeed to collect on moral debts. But I think the left has made clear it wants to collect them, in this case, by way of moral vengeance. The symbolic value of reparations to make a white underclass feel like bad people who live in a bad country, because their sentiments to the contrary are the only thing they have to lose. That’s something, in their insecurity, they will never do, and that is a strategy conscientiously designed to elicit their hate. This is not to say reckonings can’t be done in the spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness. It’s just very clear that this is not the spirit in which the left wants to conduct this particular reckoning. A “national reckoning” would not actually be a reckoning, but an amplified version of the same partisan battles that currently dominate our political discourse.

Coates sees Sanders as a “radical” like himself, whose views are just as self-consciously divisive and punitive. In this he misunderstands both Sanders and the American political scene. Reparations are enormously unpopular in the United States, while Sanders and his economic populism are—even if he can’t win in the end—quite popular. Absent the ressentiment of lower-class whites, they would be even more popular. Sanders actually can make inroads with the same demographic as Trump, and successful Democratic politicians always have. Sanders has also explicitly repudiated identity-based ressentiment of all stripes as a divisive distraction that allows plutocrats to maintain control. Where Sanders is focused on reparation (singular, as in atonement by way of repair)—on building “a nation in which we all stand together as one people”—Coates is at bottom focused on spiritual debt collection from a demographic that has nothing to give. Reparation (singular) includes reconciliation, and involves coming to see the interests of all as shared: it is highly ethical and highly practical. Reparations, far from changing the minds of the kind of people Sanders would like to persuade, would ensure that they continue to oppose socioeconomic policies that would benefit both themselves and African Americans. That is the potential cost of divisiveness, and that is why Sanders is right to oppose reparations.

It may sound like I’m advocating abandoning what is right because it seems politically difficult or unfeasible. In fact, I’m arguing that reparations—unlike socioeconomic policies—are not an effective means for accomplishing what is right, and they are not really intended to accomplish it. The successes of the civil rights and gay rights movements were predicated not on the punishment of political adversaries, but on an appeal to their conscience and humanity. In the case of reparations, divisiveness isn’t just their unfortunate byproduct: it is the punitive end that explains their symbolic value. If the goal is delivering a punishing salvo in the culture wars, reparations will be a very effective means. They will also be very effective at eliciting political reprisals. If the goal is improving the actual living conditions of actual human beings, then reparation—singular—is what is required.

Comments

Great analysis, although I question this “Sanders has also explicitly repudiated identity-based ressentiment of all stripes.” Sanders has spoken often and vehemently of a “war on women.” The purpose of that phrase is solely that it stokes identity-based ressentiment. As a pro-life socialist myself it’s having the same effect reparartions talk would have on poor whites – making me feel willfully rejected and disrespected, and making a vote for Sanders very hard to stomach.

If I had to guess, I’d suspect that Coates maybe has a sort of Newtonian assumption here: a body in motion will stay in motion. And without intervention, the body here (black America) will continue along the same direction (not as good as white folks) without a specifically-targeted intervention. So, even if there were universal race-neutral redistribution programs, they wouldn’t put black people back on the same position as white people; they’d help, but they wouldn’t eliminate the gap.

If that’s his thinking, it sounds superficially plausible, but I’d imagine that a massive Sanders-style redistribution program would end up helping (generally poorer) black people disproportionately anyway, just like how Obamacare ended up having the greatest impact on blacks and latinos. See http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/29/upshot/obamacare-who-was-helped-most.html?_r=0. When you take that disproportionate impact into account, I’m not sure what Coates’ complaint would be other than that the single-payer bill wouldn’t be titled “The Reparations for Slavery Act of 2016.” Or maybe: not focused enough, some problems need to take priority.

Still not voting for Bernie though. I don’t want to risk a massive setback if Democrats lose the White House.

Hear, hear. Living in the south, I constantly lament the fact that the left makes no attempt to reach out to young southern white males, especially those in lower income families. I grumble whenever I hear people speak as though they’re baffled by why this demographic seems to continually vote against its interests, because it’s only partly true. Certainly, many vote against their economic interests, but they have many social and personal pressures in the other direction. They are never courted by the left in the way that they were by the Tea Party in 2008, which is a shame, because racist myths would be so much more difficult to perpetuate if their younger inheritors could locate an alternative identity/narrative coming from the left that included them.

First, the author says Coates does not explain his notion of “reparations” and attacks the straw man of a cash payout; then, he admits that Coates does in fact describe it as the repaying of a “national moral debt”. Nowhere does he acknowledge Coates’s argument that the paying of this debt is in the interests of *all* Americans and not just blacks.

He assumes a hard distinction between “actual policies” and “symbolic gestures”, without conceiving that both might be necessary, or indeed that they might overlap. He fails to deal with the fact that it is a conceptual confusion and the *result* of divisive manoevering that has left poor whites with the misconception that their interests are intrinsically aligned against those of blacks. It is poor argumentation and shoddy thinking that makes the term “white privilege” an accusation rather than what it is–the proper name for a widely observed and easily relatable phenomenon. It’s not necessarily rich, liberal whites who are responsible: more likely, lazy, juvenile speakers who just want to be in the right at all costs. (The idea of white privilege is fundamentally a “ceteris paribus” position–all other things being equal, life is harder for blacks than whites–so there is simply no room for positioning *poor* whites against *wealthy* blacks.)

The author fundamentally fails to come to terms with Coates’s thinking. His suggested reparation is not supposed to be “punitive”, and he obviously does not blame people currently living for the horrors of several generations ago. His whole point is that there is a historic wound which, far from being properly and adequately addressed in the national discourse, has been perpetuated through exclusionary and prejudicial social policies and ideologies.

By perpetuating the erroneous and self-serving rhetoric that full liberation for minorities is predicated on a policy of revenge against white (straight, male) people, this author has done precisely nothing to advance this very important conversation.

“By perpetuating the erroneous and self-serving rhetoric that full liberation for minorities is predicated on a policy of revenge against white (straight, male) people, this author has done precisely nothing to advance this very important conversation.”

I believe Wes was fairly explicit in his aims: “I’m arguing that reparations—unlike socioeconomic policies—are not an effective means for accomplishing what is right, and they are not really intended to accomplish it”

You both agree on the necessity of ‘full liberation’ but disagree about how to get there. I personally don’t think that the feasibility or the material benefits of reparations were adequately explored and I think Wes was unfair (or hasty, at least) in ascribing them, and Coates’ view of them, as mostly symbolic. Just today I came across an article that analyzes the average wealth gap between white, hispanic and black families and deems reparations necessary to close this gap. (http://www.demos.org/blog/1/21/16/political-valence-reparations). From the article: “In short, wealth is a stock that builds up over time and is passed down generations. Even if you could snap your fingers and make everything non-racist going forward, you’d still have wealth disparities owing to prior injustices.”

There may well be both symbolic and material benefits to reparations, as you mention, and the two are certainly not mutually exclusive. I believe the push of the article, something that I very much agree with, is that material gains highly outweigh symbolic gains. Symbolic gains are easy to subsume into the existing societal (you can throw in “capitalist” here if you like) framework. They, rather than material gains, are ‘self-serving’ in that they allow the system to remain the same while the good liberal with the right kind of views get to feel good about themselves. This isn’t a new debate. There are many articles on how Obama’s election has done nothing to materially help black people (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/13/barack-obama-presidency-black-people). The same debate rages on as to whether the symbolic election of a woman (HC), the effects of whose policies are anti-women, is better than the election of a old white man whose policies aim to help the most marginalized people, who are statistically women. http://www.thenation.com/article/why-this-socialist-feminist-is-not-voting-for-hillary/ for a take anti-Hillary based on the material outcome argument. http://www.thenation.com/article/why-this-socialist-feminist-is-for-hillary/ for pro-Hillary based on the symbolic-identity based argument.

As an aside (and I don’t mean this to offend), I thought that explaining “white-privilege” – the kind of intellectual lingo that the underclass hates, is confused by and can’t relate to – by invoking Latin was the funniest thing I’ve read today. I know it wasn’t your intention so forgive my laughter.

I thought the essay was great! I think people are mostly agreed that poverty and racism are problems that need solutions. I don’t think that we should be afraid of exploring solutions and stop acting as though there is but one obvious one that cannot be questioned, for fear of getting thrown out of the ‘good liberal club’. I’m not convinced reparations aren’t the solution and I think a lot more work would have to be done to prove that other social programs are a better solution (must they be mutually exclusive). For more on the divisive nature of left-liberal lingo: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/11/09/getting-past-the-coalition-of-the-cool/

My favorite lines in the essay were:

“He’s willing to forgive it for being predominantly white, and he’s willing to forgive it its ignorance and parochialism. And that, I’m afraid, is why he is so irritating to the segment of the American left whose primary focus is not socioeconomic policy but punitive symbolic gestures around identity.”

I have to admit, the first thing I thought when I read Coate’s article was: “Give the Left an opportunity, and someone is eventually going to make the call for a circular firing squad.” The pessimism in Coate’s article regarding a Sanders administration’s ability to pass any progressive legislation at all is extremely unpalatable. It parades a certain attitude of powerlessness that only serves the interests of the status quo.

It would be political suicide for Sanders to endorse reparations and thus, alienate poor white voters. Sanders probably will not be nominated, but his campaign, if well run, could be the beginning of a political movement within the Democratic party which unites poor blacks, poor whites and those members of the middle class of all ethnic groups struggling to get by around concrete economic issues as well as issues like healthcare and free university education for their children. That sounds very promising, but Sanders can only achieve that if he gets poor whites and middle class whites to see where their economic interests are and that they share many interests with poor and middle class blacks. I hope that Sanders runs his campaign thinking in the long-run prospect of building a movement within the Democratic party rather than in getting higher short poll ratings or even worse winning points with the left-wing commentariat.

My concern with Sanders’ approach is that in socialist societies the answer to this problem has typically been first the Sanders-type universalist one, followed by the realization that the universalist one (while still making a positive difference) doesn’t quite do the job. In some cases the universalist claims were then used to obscure the ongoing problems of racism that universalist social welfare programs did not remedy.

My personal inclination is towards universalism, but I am very wary of these previous examples, and of another episode of the American left compromising with the race regime to effectively offer welfare programs that are biased towards supporting poor whites. In other words I am worried that without an explicit gesture towards reparations the welfare programs will be universalist in name only.

Running on a platform of the “the whites must pay” would obviously be political suicide, but when affordances are made to ensure that universal welfare benefits are extended to black communities (because these affordances would be necessary as a practical measure) this could be justified in terms of reparations for previous abuse and neglect. The thing to avoid is the dogma that “one size fits all” in the face of counter-evidence. As you say: “Reparation (singular) includes reconciliation, and involves coming to see the interests of all as shared: it is highly ethical and highly practical.” In “practical” terms that would mean building a disproportionate amount of infrastructure to serve historically underprovisioned Black communities, in order to ensure universal welfare provision. In the face of such efforts whites would be inclined to ask “Why do they get so much stuff?” and the only real answer would be that these are reparations for previous neglect.

Reading this, I kind of wonder how much of the debate is semantic. Even if someone had a “universalist” Wes-style approach, that approach would basically entail redistribution to the worse-off (let’s just say individuals with one or more children and an income of $30,000 and below, etc.). Black people disproportionately fall in that category of “worse-off.” In that case, your redistribution program (whatever form it takes… infrastructure or health care or cash transfers or whatever) would end up helping black people disproportionately. If so, why can’t we call that “reparations”?

Of course, such a redistribution program would do a lot else other than helping black people — e.g., helping Native Americans, helping whites on disability, etc. But whatever else it’s doing, such a program would be closing the black/white gap, and isn’t that basically the point of “reparations”?

Yes, I know there are specific issues that disproportionately impact black people like police brutality, disproportionate incarceration, problems with networking/access that arise from historical segregation, etc. Those specific problems deserve targeted responses — e.g., cracking down on police officers, having saner sentencing policies, affirmative action, etc. But none of these examples really call into question a universalist approach where the goal to basically to get everyone to a basic, minimally good quality of life.

Anton I completely agree. The main point is to ensure that welfare provisions (e.g. Public housing, health care, education, etc.) are provided to a universal standard, which would be very expensive to implement in neglected communities (which tend to be black) and would require some justification that the reparation argument could provide.

Glad to see someone address coates call for reparations from a position of reason rather than emotion. Often such arguments can be accused of hiding implicit bias and open to the counter attack that anyone opposing reparations is racist. Coates arguments have the merit of presenting how a pattern of bias and racist discrimination have repeated in our history. The problem lies not in that side of his argument, but in the assumption that reparations are the solution. The problem with this as I see it are a bit different from those already presented above. First, there is something self-defeating about fighting racisim with racism, discrimination with discrimination. Any global argument for reparations would have this sense to it. This in part is what has happened in the related but more partial policy of affirmative action, especially after fifty years and the realities of a successful black middle and upper class, economically, politically, and socially. Sander’s economic and education policies would address those left behind, black or white. Second, even if we would desire to have reparations, it is difficult to see how to figure this out. Who gets what for what injustice, and who pays. Do the children pay for the sins of their grandparents? Do generations of immigrants and their grandchildren ,who had nothing to do with slavery and so on, also need to pay? And once we start to consider reparations where do we draw the lines? it is imaginable that everyone with any historical grievance would begin to demand reparations for the perceived injustice. It is endless. My own sense is that it is better to acknowledge the past and try to create a more just society going forward. Sander’s policies may just do that

Nice write. After reading the Coates article, I believe that you, like Sanders, are ” one who doesn’t actually understand the argument’.
Although you separate the ignoramuses from the educated white Americans, Coates is addressing institutional racism when he speaks of reparations. This is the racism that does not necessarily require direct participation. The kind of racism that is still practiced today, i.e., “raising the minimum wage doesn’t really address the fact that black men without criminal records have about the same shot at low-wage work as white men with them”.
I would give the ignoramuses more credit. I believe they already know, or at lease sense, that their country is more evil than good.

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